On Media

Murdoch names lawyer as Sun anger grows

Way out beyond the Beltway and across the pond, "civil war" is brewing at The Sun, Rupert Murdoch's most profitable paper and Britain's biggest tabloid.

Here is today's roundup of the latest news and editorials:

Following the arrest of Sun journalists and growing tensions between Sun staffers and News Corp, the Financial Times reports that Murdoch's top lawyer Gerson Zweifach has been assigned to News Corp’s internal affairs committee:

The addition of Zweifach to the management and standards committee was described by people close to the company as a natural decision for its recently appointed general counsel and is seen as beefing up a body coming under increased scrutiny.

Mr Murdoch will fly to London on Thursday, people familiar with his plans said, and he is expected to tell the newsroom of The Sun before the end of the week that he has no plan to close or sell the newspaper...

...They added that Mr Murdoch is likely to make clear, however, that News Corp has little choice but to co-operate with investigations through the MSC, which was set up to defuse allegations that the company had obstructed investigations into phone hacking but now finds itself accused by journalists of betrayal.

Meanwhile, the Sun's associate editor Trevor Kavanagh is denouncing the recent arrests. In a column titled "Witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom," he writes:

[I]n what would at any other time cause uproar in Parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners, [The Sun's] journalists are being treated like members of an organised crime gang.

They are subjects of the biggest police operation in British criminal history — bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder probe...

...Instead of being called in for questioning, 30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4, former Sun journalist and media commentator Roy Greenslade referred to Kavanagh's editorial as a "overt attack on the police" and, more importantly, as a covert attack on Murdoch:

It is the clearest evidence we have of what amounts to a civil war at the News Corporation.... These are the views of Dominic Mohan, the Sun editor. He's given it full weight on the Op-ed page of the paper; it appears very high up on the website -- normally Trevor Kavanagh's pieces don't, so that also is significant.

And the very fact that it mentions, albeit in code, the sort of sensitive business of the family breaking up -- it's a direct attack on the way in which News Corporation's management and standards committee is handing over to the police information which Kavanagh clearly feels -- and all the Sun journalists feel -- is wrong.

Murdoch will make an effort to stem the staffers' anger when he arrives later this week, and Reuters reports that "those close to the media mogul expect the 80-year-old to show far more composure and calculation when he addresses journalists on a hostile newsroom floor, compared with his conduct last July when he suddenly shut the News of the World paper in the face of public revulsion over phone hacking."

But Andrew Neil, a former editor at Murdoch's Sunday Times, believes that that may be an impossible task. “The Sun has turned against Rupert Murdoch," he told Reuters. "He has put in place things he cannot stop. The Sun was the most loyal to Murdoch. It was closest to his heart. Now Sun journalists believe he has launched a witch-hunt to protect himself. He won’t be welcomed. They won’t believe his promises. They’re sullen. They’re resentful. They feel betrayed.”

I will continue to post daily roundups on the turmoil at News Corp here, as long as the story remains interesting.